People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 6, 7 February 1907, Page 28

People We Hear About

\Martin Sheridan, the. greatest point winner in the world's carnival of sport, recently held at Athens, Greece, was oorn in County Mayo, Ireland, 25 years .ago. Sheridan is> now a policeman in New York. Physically he is an ideal athlete, standing within half an inch of six feet. He has been in training, more or less, air the time for the past ten years, and has been steadily improving. Two years ago Ralph, Rose, the Calif ornian giant, tied with Sheridan in throwing . td*e discus. Since that time no one, not even Rose, has come near his performance. Besides the discus ■ and the stone and the shot, JMartin is an expert with the 56-pound weight, which he can throw over "thirty feet. He has cleaved Ax feet in an exhibition high jump, and can do about eleven feet with the vaulting pole. Tiwenty-one feet_ has no terrors- for him in the .running broad jump. . * . Cardinal Richard of Paris, who was recently to leave his episcopal palace by the French Government, was born at Names on March 1,1819. He" was consecrated Bishop of Beiley in 1872, was named Coadjutoi, with the right of succession to Oartftnal Guibert, Ln 1875, became Archbishop of Paris in July, 1886; and was created Cardinal in the Consistory of May 24,' f899. In a grand festival at Notre JDame a~ few weeks ago Cardinal Richard, clothed in gorgeous vestments, proceeded up the aisle to., the altar at the head of a body of clergy. As the procession moved'along 'a little child fell from one of the pews right in the way of the Caidina-1, and the _aged man bent down and carefully placed the child back again by the side of - the mother. Advancing years have forced him to J appoint a Coadjutor in the person of Monsignor ' Amette. The assistant Archbishop is a splendid figure of. a -man, alert and vigorous, of an intellectual cast of{ coun/fcenaiice, anld natural dignity in his mien— a real modern Prince of ihe Church; . Early in December Madame Patti gave what was described as her farewell concert in London. It is fifty-six years ago since Madame Patti, then seven years of age, first sang in public in New York. Her. next ap>pearance was nine years iaiei, when, after a course of study, she played Uie role of -Lucia on November 24, 1859, and achieved a tremendous success. Two years later she crossed the Atlantic sing at Covent Garden, beginning a career at London's principal i ojpera house wKKch lasted for twenty years. During these twenty years her annual earnings are stated to have, ragged between £3<J,000 and £35,000. -Tours in North and South America and Argentina have brought her .cvjen- greater monetary rewards, and it is in no way overstating the facts when it is said that- during the four and a half decades in which she has been singing to the world her voice has earned her £750,000." For many single engagements in London -she has received £800, while it is on record that in New York, when playing -in opera, she once received a sum of £,1006 for each representation, paid in her dressing-room before she went on the stage.

Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, foremost among Ameri- ' can linguists, with a world-wide, reputation in philology, -died at Bristol, \t., Dcceraber 14. Deceased, who . was 68 years old afc the time of his death; was proficient in seventy languages, excelling in this .respect, it is said, any other man. In 1864 he, 'became secretary of the United States Legation in Russia. In 1869 he travelled through Bohemia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Roumania, and in the following year returned, to St. Petersburg, where he read 'before the Slavonic Society a paper in Russian giving an account of his observations. During the next few ,- years deceased made several journeys through Southern Russia and the Caucasus, studying languages all the time. In 1883 he became connected with the Smithsonian Institution, since which time he had collected vocabularies of many Indian languages. He later on engaged in gathering a collection of Celtic mythology. For this purpose he spent the summer of 188? in remote parts of Ireland. This was . the first, systematic collection ever made of the myths of Ireland. He read papers upon^- various topics embraced in his linguistic researches before the Association . for the Advancement of Science and the American Anthropological Society of Washington. He also prepared several volumes—some'toeing original, and others translations from Russian, Polish, Magyar, and Bohemian. As * an author he was Best known as the translator from the Polish of work's of Henryk Sienkiewics.